Monitoring Negative Online Reviews Of Your Brand With a Free Online Reputation System

The ORS (Online Reputation System).

The importance of handling negative online reviews is clear, but how do you know when they're posted. You need to set up a way to monitor your brand, an "online reputation system" which alerts you to when something pertinent about your business is said. If it's something good, you get a pat on the back. If it's a public mention, even better: free publicity! But, if it's a negative online review, it alerts you quickly so that you can begin the process of damage control.

Setting Up Your Online Reputation System For Free

The easiest way to get a quick and efficient setup to monitor things said about your business online is to go to alerts.google.com, and set up an online reputation monitoring alert system to bring to you attention INSTANTLY whenever anyone mentions your business. All you need is a Google account...and of course you have one of those already, right? Right?

Seriously, how easy is this!?

You have a few options when setting up a Google alert.

Result Type: This gives you the option to have Google's spiders scour "everything," or only news sources, blogs, video, or discussion forums. Chances are, the first two (news sources and blogs) will be the most pertinent, but you might as well say "everything," just in case.
How Often: This is a nice feature that you can set to instantly, daily, or weekly. If you're a smaller business and you don't get too many mentions, the instantly feature is very cool. If you're a well established business, then a daily or even weekly update could be sufficient, especially if you are mentioned regularly (as 20 emails a day could get annoying). I'd opt for daily over montly, however, because you want to respond as quickly as possible to negative online reviews.
How Many: This feature let's you allow Google to determine whether you want "only the best" or "everything" dumped in your email box or news feed. Start with everything, and scale back if it's too irrelevant.

That's it. Read the email when it comes in (scan it, really).

Google Alerts are VERY COOL. You can also set them up to trigger on certain key words in your field, helping you stay abreast of the current trends in your field. (e.g., if you're a doctor, "Malpractice" or "nutritional medicine" could be things that catch your interest, if you're a lawyer, perhaps information about "laws," or more specifically, "interstate commerce law" could pique your interest). Of course, there are some other very creative uses for Google alerts. And remember, you can always use "Boolean search operators" (i.e., "AND" and "OR" and "NOT") to separate terms in the same alert, or you can just set up different alerts (but bear in mind that that means separate emails, and over time, a daily feed of three or four emails can clog up your inbox!).

Just remember that if / WHEN you do get a negative online business review, they usually have a silver lining.

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